


Countdown

by AlasPoorYorcake



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, NSFW, No Ecto-Genitalia, Nothing explicit, also complete butchering of scientific concepts and total misuse of science terms, for now, kind of one-sided sanster, sans regularly gets his boss off but it means """Nothing""", they're skeletons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2020-06-30 13:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19854379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlasPoorYorcake/pseuds/AlasPoorYorcake
Summary: Working at the labs took a turn for the worse the minute experiments on the SOULs began and W.D. Gaster holed himself up in the facility's basement. Sans does his best to adapt to the situation.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE: This work will contain smut. Given that I have never written smut before, it's pretty tame. I will probably update the tags as I go, just in case anything stronger develops, so keep an eye out.
> 
> That being said, this is not smut-centric. And if anything plot-related happens during the smuttiness, I will update the notes of each chapter, just in case anyone is uncomfortable reading that sort of thing.
> 
> Love you all! :)
> 
> 10/9/19 EDIT: So I was Very unsatisfied with how I'd written this fic, right from the start, which started to kill my motivation for writing any further. So I revised it. NO plot points will change. All that will change is a bit smoother writing, and hopefully an easier couple of chapters to grasp. Thanks for your patience, guys, and new chapter coming soon :)

* * *

The coffee machine wasn’t working.

Sans didn’t bother to bite back his sigh as he wrenched open the top of the coffee machine with more force than was necessary. He was barely tall enough to see into the machine, but the problem was evident before he even looked. No coffee grinds.

He loosened his grip on the edge of the counter and counted backwards from ten. There was no reason to get angry, he knew. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Things like this weren’t uncommon; he just had to cool his boiling frustration and wait. For good measure, he glared stonily at the half-empty tub of ground coffee on the counter like it might spontaneously fill at his command.

So preoccupied with his rancour, he nearly didn’t hear the tell-tale scrape of scales on the linoleum tile approaching the break room. Even then, it wasn’t until she spoke from the threshold that Sans truly let his glare on the tub drop. “H-Hey. Uh. I-I think it’s nearing the end of the c-cycle.”

“yeah, hopefully.” He didn’t turn to face her. Instead, he drummed a few fingers on the countertop and waited. A shuffling noise sounded behind him, and he closed his eyesockets. “sorry. hey. how’s, uh. how’s the whole manifold thing holding up?”

He could hear Alphys’ flinch, her tail’s scales scuffing the bleak tile. “Oh! Uh, well. It’s not? N-Not at the moment. T-Three of the one-dimensional charts k-keep showing figure eights, and I keep l-losing track of the atlases for the others.”

He nodded, unsurprised. He briefly eyed the shadow on the counter cast by nothing in particular, for lack of anything else to do. This cycle really was getting worse by the hour.

Another shuffling noise split the silence. Unable to hold out any longer, he turned to face her, holding his breath in anticipation. It was with a pained relief that Sans turned to see his coworker standing in the threshold, fidgeting uncomfortably with her claws. She looked up at him, and all at once he saw his own relief reflected in her expression.

Alphys’ smile was crooked, and painfully stale. She stood with a hunch, eyes darting away intermittently, like she wasn’t sure when to make eye contact. Something told him that was normal, but he didn’t want to presume, given that he hadn’t seen her in some time. Actually, were it not for that fact, he would’ve said she didn’t look herself. But that sort of thing had different meaning down here. She was still Alphys. A brilliant-minded lizard monster with a nervous disposition. 

Yellow scales, and a scorched lab coat.

She hummed anime outros under her breath when she worked.

_ Simplification. _

“S-Sans?”

He’d been silent for too long, looking at her. With a shrug, he said, “i’m sure they’ll show up soon. you gone home yet?”

“N-Not yet!” She replied too quickly, with false cheer. He winced at the presentation, though he couldn’t blame her. 

It was hard being down here for long stretches of time. Sometimes reality warped and twisted in odd ways, and sometimes the mind played tricks. Sometimes the two synced up, and it was difficult to tell which was which. In the end, it was easier to face things on one’s own terms. Which, for Alphys, meant heaps of fake, unbridled enthusiasm.

(Sans wasn’t going to complain. He’d never say it, but her coping mechanisms often reminded Sans of his brother. It used to keep him grounded, on his worst days. Back when he saw her at least on a weekly basis.)

Outside of the realm of Sans’ thoughts, Alphys’ hands flew together to fidget, claws clacking against each other. “H-Have you? G-Gone home, I mean.”

“maybe,” he winked, ignoring the dark shapes that abruptly shifted behind his closed socket. He opened his eye just in case and continued, “figured i would, in a bit. i’m heading to the doc now. which means i’ll probably be ordering in. any suggestions?”

Some of the tension in her shoulders melted away, and a genuine smile pulled at her lips. Sans felt a knot in his ribcage loosen slightly.

“W-Well, a new r-restaurant opened up just around the c-corner,” she grinned, leaning forward to whisper conspiratorially. “I-I’m not sure about t-takeout, but I hear their candlelit dinners are half-off until next T-Tuesday.”

Sans’ eyelights flickered in his surprise. Busted. He rolled his eyelights, casually folding his arms. “no kiddin’? guess that means you’ve finally got somewhere to take Asgore?”

She audibly choked, then stuffed her face in her hands, trying to hide her flushed cheeks and abashed grin. “Aw, c-c’mon, Sans! L-Low blow!”

“tit for tat,” he shrugged, chuckling. “besides, things have gotten so weird down here lately, i wouldn’t be surprised if you brought him down here and he immediately took a knee.”

She made a very undignified squeak, making flapping motions toward him with her hands and keening in embarrassment. Though there was a very telling gleam in her eye… “heh. my bad. you’re right. shouldn’t make jokes about married men. even if it’s obvious he’s got your  _ goat _ .”

“S-Sans, for g-god’s sake—!”

She cut herself off— there was a low rumbling coming from under their feet. 

They locked gazes for a moment, before they both reached out to grab a stable surface. Soon, the entire break room began to shake violently. One of the linoleum tiles in the corner cracked with a gentle snap, like torn dead skin, and a mug from a cabinet near Sans’ head came tumbling down, its impact with the floor unnaturally soundless as it shattered into thousands of pieces.

After a minute, the quaking began to die down. Sans glanced up at Alphys— she was unharmed, but still physically recoiling against the counter. Her anxious gaze met his eyelights, and he grinned.

“i guess you could say he’s a bit  _ sans _ -itive today,” he said, then grimaced as another quake began under their feet. This one was definitely more intense, and he gripped the counter behind him a little harder than necessary. Once the shockwaves faded a bit, he shot her an apologetic look.

“oops. heh. we, uh, might want to lay off the names for a bit.”

“Y-Yeah,” she tittered nervously, her hands wringing restlessly. Her beady eyes glanced around the room, eyeing each corner with apprehension. “A-At least until the next c-cycle.”

“sure,” he wiped at the beads of sweat forming on his skull, and glanced back at the coffee machine. “heh. speak of the devil.”

The machine’s screen was now flashing a green light, asking for the mug size. Sans tapped a medium size and appraised the hunk of metal. Its container was filled to the brim with coffee grounds, the lid mysteriously replaced. The tub of coffee grounds on the counter was completely empty.

“looks like conservation of mass finally pulled through,” he huffed, flashing her a grin. “i think conservation of energy just needed time to  _ recharge _ .”

“T-Thank goodness,” Alphys sighed, rubbing her forehead with her lab coat sleeve. “Maybe n-now I’ll be able to f-find those atlases, a-again.” 

Sans paused in the middle of throwing away the coffee grind tub, and offered her a consoling smile.

He knew this kind of thing weighed on her harder than on them, and not just because of disappearing experiments. As capable as Alphys was, she was still primarily an engineer, not a physicist. She could keep up with them when it came to the technology and a few of the higher-level concepts— enough to run the simple experiments for them while they worked on the harder stuff. But when it came down to it, she hadn’t been dealing with reality-warping for anywhere near as long as they had.

He tossed the tub in the garbage and returned to the coffee machine, feeling her gaze heavy on his back.

“L-Look, about the d-doctor—”

“i know,” Sans cut her off, shaking his head. Of course she was going to spark this conversation. He should’ve known. He didn’t want to get into this. He hated when they got into this. This time, the time before that, and the time before that. How many times had they gone through this, just for her to forget over and over again? How many more times lie ahead?

(Of course, that wasn’t the only reason this conversation bit at his marrow a little too deeply.)

By this point, his words were practically rote, the emotion in them flat and forced. “it’s not anything serious. i promise. heh. you may be the leading expert in this field, but i’m not inexperienced, myself.”

She was quiet for a long moment, though the clack of her claws was enough to fill the silence. Finally, she muttered, “I’m not the e-expert, I’m just. W-Well-versed.”

“yeah. well i’ll let you know if i need your help, alright? look, grinder’s full,” he gestured vaguely to the machine, turning to pull two clean mugs from the cabinet. “you want some?”

There was no response.

He glanced backward at the empty room.

She was gone.

The cabinet door shut behind him with a click and he sighed, leaning his skull against it and closing his eyesockets. He shouldn’t have needed to look to know that she had gone. She had probably left hours ago.

At least he had seen her this time, and they’d spoken. The first couple of times this sort of thing happened, he’d been terrified he had completely hallucinated her, and the times after that, he’d worried that he had lapsed into a fugue state and lost time. But the records from the machines had indicated differently.

Down here, timelines didn’t quite work the same way. Mere exposure to the place was enough to change people. Change their fates, their futures. As a result, these days, his and her timelines intersected rarely. Occasionally he was a couple of hours ahead of her and vice versa, but their timestreams hadn’t crossed long enough for a full-blown conversation in… 

Well. The point being, it was impossible to tell how long it had been.

But it was a relief to see the frazzled intern again, for many reasons. Sans had really started to worry about her. She was putting herself in danger by being down here for such long stretches of time. They all had been. For a while there, he’d almost forgotten what her voice sounded like.

A brilliant lizard monster with a nervous disposition. Yellow scales. Scorched lab coat. Anime.

And a stutter.

_ Simplification. _

Sans pushed a breath past his locked teeth and opened his eyesockets. That aside, he really could do without her lecturing. As short-lived as he was able to swing the dreaded conversation nowadays, it always threw his mind back to the first go-around. The concerned arguing, growing to acidic shouting. All those things he said he didn’t mean— the things she wasn’t supposed to know, no matter what. Both of them storming out. 

Only for them to rehash the same argument a few hours later, as though she had no recollection of the first one at all.

Sans shook himself, focusing in on the present. The two mugs were on the counter where he had left them. The shadow with no source had disappeared. The coffee machine was humming, ready to pump out ungodly amounts caffeine at first notice.

This cycle was calmer. 

Which, unfortunately, meant  _ he _ would be the exact opposite.

Sans bit back a groan and sighed instead. He punched the doc’s specifications into the coffee machine and fetched the creamer from the fridge while waiting for the mug to fill. When he returned and poured in the correct amount of creamer, he punched in his own preferences and set the second mug under the machine’s faucet.

Sans watched his own coffee drip slowly out, letting his sockets fall halfway closed.

His brother was going to kill him when he got home. It was late into the night already, going by Alphys’ abrupt leave. It was probably hours past when Sans was supposed to be back. 

But he still had to visit the doc. Plunge deeper into the rabbit hole, so to speak.

Eh. Sans would find a way to make it up to his brother, somehow. He always did.

When his mug was full, at last, he took both cups in hand and made his way out of the room. Thankfully, he didn’t have to worry about opening any doors on his way down to the doc. 

(Too late, they had all realized just how horrible of an idea it was to have separated workspaces. They’d long since taken all the doors down, stored them in one of the closets and warned everyone to ignore the faint, intermittent knocking coming from inside.)

In fact, navigation had become significantly easier, given that there were no more instances of doors opening to rooms that they weren’t normally attached to. But the rooms still shifted and sometimes disappeared altogether. It was a nightmare to work with, especially when there had been more than four of them.

Sans paused mid-step and tightened his grip on the mugs.

_ Three  _ of them. There were only three of them now.

_ Don’t think about it. _

He was fine. It was fine.

From there, Sans picked up the pace, careful not to spill the coffees or peer down any particularly menacing hallways. He ambled past a room filled with beds without a second glance. 

(That was one of those rooms that appeared at random. Sleeping down here had been prohibited from the start, but just before they’d implemented the buddy system— hell, back when there were enough of them to warrant a buddy system— they’d lost one of their own to that room.)

Sans turned a corner, trying to recall what the monster that had disappeared in there had looked like. They had been a kind monster, if a bit absentminded. But their name had been complicated and hard to pronounce. They were tall, and thin. Bright white. And kind.

_ Simplification. _

…That was all he could remember.

Sans took a deep breath and continued down the hall, taking several turns before he came to a gated elevator. He didn’t bother to stifle his relieved sigh as he toed the gate open and then closed it, elbowing the button for the basement. Sans shut his eyesockets as the elevator jerked once, then abruptly plummeted downward.

Wind rushed through his skull, blocked only by his teeth. The elevator rattled like it was hurtling through open air off-rails, but he kept still, blindly balancing the mugs of coffee in his hands. At one point, he felt a puff of hot air buffett his face, like the breath of a giant animal preparing to attack. He kept his sockets closed.

Finally, the ride slowed to a stop, and Sans opened his eyes. The room beyond the see-through elevator gate was completely dark. He toed open the gate again and stepped through, onto what felt like cold tile.

Sans knew the room was expansive, spacious from wall-to-wall. But nobody had seen the walls (or floor or ceiling or anything else to suggest the room’s dimensions) in a very long time. He walked blindly forward into the enveloping darkness, doing his best not to spill the coffee as the ground seemed to shift beneath his feet.

Eventually, Sans began to see a light further down. The pale, artificial light of a computer screen, and the silhouette of a familiar skeleton monster.

As he always was these days, the doc was sitting cross-legged in front of several computer screens, donning his white lab coat, beige sweater, and black pants. Only one of his shoes was on, and it was untied. As Sans came closer, he could see the doctor’s hands peering out of his coat sleeves, phalanges long and thin and trembling. They flitted between multiple keyboards comfortably placed within arm’s reach and the notepad settled easily in the doctor’s lap.

And, as always, the doctor was murmuring under his breath. These days, his words were incomprehensible to any non-skeleton, and barely comprehensible to the only skeleton who cared to listen.

Sans’ soul twisted painfully in his ribcage, as it did every time he saw the doc like this.

“brought you somethin’,” Sans whispered as quietly as possible, setting the coffee mug down beside the focused scientist. A third mug with half-drunken, cold coffee sat a few inches away. Sans moved that one further out of reach, making a mental note to wash it out the next time he went up.

Then Sans settled down next to the doctor, sitting cross-legged and taking sips of his own coffee as he watched his boss work. As brittle as the doctor’s fingers looked, perpetually quivering as if they were cold, they moved with surprising efficiency over the keys. On occasion, the doctor would absently conjure extra hands to continue finishing a line as he moved on to the next task.

It was mesmerizing, watching his superior work. A show in itself. The only thing more impressive, Sans knew, was that the doc’s mind was moving faster than his fingers ever could. Always calculating and computing and never stopping.

“don’t suppose you’re up for a break?” Sans let the spark of hope curdle in his soul, though he knew it was useless. The doctor never took a break. But still, Sans always asked. Just in case.

The scientist didn’t respond, which wasn’t a surprise. They sat in silence for a time, Sans idly watching as the doc’s movements slowly grew jagged and uncoordinated. The mumbling got louder and harsher, even less comprehensible with each passing moment.

It must have been a pretty stable cycle for the doctor to get so worked up so early in the process. The stable cycles were less interesting, had less to observe. There were less events to experiment with. The worst cycles, where reality seemed barely able to keep itself together, were the only times Sans ever saw the doctor somewhat content with himself, striking away at his computers like his very existence depended on it. In both scenarios, he was extremely averse to interruption of any kind.

There was a blast of static from one of the computers, and the scientist’s mumblings were broken by a mocking imitation, loud and abrasive, before returning to his frustrated mutterings. Sans couldn’t help but chuckle. As much as being down here had changed them all— most of them in very unpleasant ways— Gaster was still Gaster, no matter what.

In an instant, a tell-tale rumbling resounded through the facility, shaking the room hard enough to rattle the eyelights in Sans’ skull. The computer screens started going haywire with alarms and caution banners.

Beside him, the doctor was undoubtedly glaring at him. He grinned back sheepishly.

“sorry, doc. must’ve slipped my mind.”

A moment later, the quake calmed down, and the ambient computer clicks and mutterings of the scientist were the only things left to stave off the silence. Even without the intermittent quakes, it wasn’t hard to tell that the doctor was getting very agitated, very quickly. And Sans wasn’t exactly helping, sitting there and messing up his readings.

“hey. doc. gimme a hand.”

There was a discontented grumble. Sans rolled his eyelights.

“yeah, yeah, i should be working, i know. now gimme a hand.”

Almost reluctantly, a magical hand appeared, hovering over Sans’ lap, clenched in a tight fist. Sans shifted, and leaned his back gently against the scientist’s side, cupping the magical fist in his own hands. Imperceptibly, the doctor stiffened, his real fingers slowing ever so slightly over the keyboards.

Sans huffed, turning the fist around until he could see the hole carved into the top of it. With a careful touch, he traced the edges of the hole, stroking the imitation-bone slowly. A minute passed, and behind him, the doctor’s posture began to relax.

Sans kept massaging the fist, occasionally letting a phalange dip into the hollow space and brush against the curled fingers on the other side of the palm. When the doctor seemed relaxed enough, Sans began to pry the fingers away from the palm, running a hand over the knuckles and silently urging the doctor to let go of all of his tension.

Finally, the hand fell limp, and the scientist let a shaky breath past his teeth. Sans chuckled, turning the hand over in his own, rubbing slow circles into the magic hand with his thumbs.

“there you are.” He turned his skull to the side, to address the doctor. “better?”

He got a sharp nod in response. The magical hand twitched in Sans’ grip.

A moment later, it twitched again. As if it wanted to clench but was keeping itself from doing so. Sans sighed.

“c’mon, doc, don’t lie to me.”

The doctor stiffened again, and in a flash, the magical hand dissipated. Sans took his weight off of the doctor’s side and crossed his legs, facing the computers. He put a hand on the scientist’s knee and squeezed.

Though the doc had never told him outright, Sans had always understood. Sometimes the work got too much— but sometimes it was too little, and the doctor was left floundering, mind churning at full speed while reality itself chugged along, too slow to keep up. Sometimes the doctor needed to be  _ forced  _ to a stop.

And most of the time, he didn’t know how to ask.

Sans reached past the doctor’s knee and grabbed the notepad and pen from his lap. The doctor gave no indication he still needed it, so Sans set it beside his recently brewed coffee. Then he placed his hand on the doctor’s thigh and squeezed again. No reaction.

So Sans let his hand move up the doctor’s leg, pausing at the hem of his shirt. Again, the doctor made no indication to stop him, so Sans slid his hand underneath and rested it at the top of the doctor’s hip. 

Keeping his eyelights on the doctor’s real hands— still typing, though with a noticeable hesitation— Sans caressed the edge of the doctor’s ilium, rubbing slow, gentle circles down the interior side. The doctor’s breathing quickened, stuttering.

“breathe,” Sans admonished, stopping and waiting until he felt the doctor’s soul shudder and thrum consistently before continuing his ministrations.

Sans moved his hand further inward, until he reached the base of the doctor’s spine. From there, he trailed upward, letting his fingers drag against each of the vertebrae. Moving agonizingly slowly, he felt the doctor’s tension rise in tandem. Then Sans’ hand reached the bottom of the ribcage, where he paused.

Sans could feel the cold magic pumping off of the doctor’s soul in waves. Just above his hand. 

The scientist’s soul.

A little further up and his life would literally be in Sans’ hands.

Sans savagely forced his thoughts in another direction. Soulplay was not to be taken lightly. It was… significant. Personal, in a way that friendships couldn’t reach, and intimate, in a way that sex was not. In other words, it was  _ extremely  _ off-limits.

Beneath Sans’ motionless hand, the doctor squirmed, quietly impatient. Sans shook off his thoughts, slowly running his hand back down the scientist’s spine. On the way, he took note of every shiver he elicited, and lingered at certain sensitive spots as he moved up the length of the spine again. He moved down the spine, then up, setting a steady rhythm for the doctor to fall into.

Of course, this was how it had started, all that time ago. Sans couldn’t help the way his grin tightened slightly at the memory. A slow day at work. A familiar, frantic frustration. A quiet offer of a massage. A quiet acceptance, slowly turning into something more. A wordless habit, an unspoken favor.

It didn’t  _ mean  _ anything, Sans knew. It was completely devoid of sentiment, strictly business. It was a needed respite from the doctor’s work. That’s all.

(And if, on occasion, Sans found his gaze locked on the doctor’s mouth, desperate to pull a groan through the man’s teeth… 

Well. He was simply making sure he was doing it correctly.)

The doctor’s breathing was starting to grow ragged, his posture loosening and rocking with the tempo for more stimulation. Taking the hint, Sans shifted slightly closer for a better angle and began to pick up the pace. Stroking down and up, rubbing tiny circles into the crease of every vertebrae again and again, he kept a keen eye on the doctor’s face.

(And yet, every time his hand neared the doctor’s soul, Sans couldn’t help but hesitate, careful not to get too close.)

When his ministrations seemed at their peak and he could feel the doctor getting restless again, Sans moved his hand back down to massage the doctor’s pelvis. Finally, in the relative quiet, he could hear the doc’s bones began to tremble. The clacking of keystrokes became sparse and uneven, the scientist’s fervor increasing as Sans gradually put more pressure and speed into his strokes. 

The doctor’s eyesockets, though still glued to the screens in front of him, were starting to fall half-lidded in a cocktail of contentment and tension. His eyelights were starting to grow large and unfocused, blurring around the edges. Sans stared unabashedly, struggling to keep his own breathing steady as he soaked in every feature of his boss’ expression.

He had to admit, although it was captivating to watch the scientist work, it was equally as fascinating to watch him swell into an intoxicated frenzy. As careful and controlled as the scientist usually was, watching him unravel was something akin to taking apart a bundle of tightly wrapped twine. Even moreso when Sans was the one unwinding him, tugging his jaw slack, urging his hips forward, prompting his eyesockets closed in a distracted fervor.

Just as the doctor was getting close, hips bucking desperately forward, Sans shifted, moving his hand along the inside of the doctor’s pelvis and between the pubic arch. He massaged the bone steadily, rubbing deeper and harder according to the pace the doctor set with his hips. The doctor let out a soft grunt, abruptly taking initiative in bucking hard enough for Sans’ fingers to scuff the bone.

A moment later, the doctor’s tension reached a crescendo, tension rippling through condensed marrow and paralyzing him in place. Sans continued his ministrations relentlessly, pushing him through then gently easing the man off the edge. After a few seconds, the doctor fell limp, letting his legs uncross as he bent forward, panting.

As delicately as possible, Sans pulled his hand away from his boss and quietly shook out the tension in it. He leaned sideways, trying to catch the doctor’s expression through the darkness. When he spoke, there was an imperceptible strain in his voice.

“better?”

The doctor lifted his head, then brought it down jerkily. A nod.

Sans let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. All he wanted was to help— he didn’t want to hurt the doctor, or anything. The man just… needed a break every now and then. And Sans was perfectly capable of providing.

They sat in relative silence for a few minutes, listening to the doctor’s heavy breaths and the computers’ intermittent beeping.

It wasn’t uncommon for the scientist to be so still, after. It was almost as if, after his mind was forced to clear, it took just as long for his body to start working again.

(The longer the motionless quiet lingered, the more Sans ached to reach a hand out, to rub circles on the doctor’s back. To pull the man into an embrace. To hold him close. 

But he didn’t.

It was just a reprieve. It didn’t mean anything.)

The air in front of Sans’ face stuttered and two magical hands formed mid-air, relaying a gesture he barely caught. Sans couldn’t help but sigh in relief.

“anytime, doc.”

The hands flickered and moved again, their movements as jagged and unsure as the doctor’s breaths.

“nah, don’t worry about it. he’ll be fine. i’ll just read him an extra bedtime story tomorrow.”

The hands made to move again, but Sans didn’t give them the chance. He took to his feet, stepped around the coffees and notepad, and approached the computers. After a moment, he found what he was looking for, and turned to the doctor’s still hunched form. 

“still got a couple hours left in this cycle.” Sans looked down to the coffee he brought, and folded his arms. “if i’m sick of coffee, at this point, you’ve gotta be, too. and i’m willing to bet it’s been more than a few hours since you’ve had food, so. any preferences?”

The hands shimmered in place, not forming any words, but just wringing together, uncertain. Sans chuckled.

“why don’t i just surprise you?”

The hands were quick to answer.

“heh. yeah, yeah, got it in one. what can i say? they’ve got fantastic burgers.”

The hands moved once again, then disappeared. Sans hummed quietly in response, moving around his unmoving boss to pick up his own coffee mug and the one from who-knows-how-long ago. Meanwhile, he nudged the more recent, lukewarm coffee towards the doc.

“if you’re not going to sleep, drink. i’ll be back in a bit.” Sans made for the direction from which he entered, then paused to look back. “and don’t even  _ think _ of touching those computers while i’m gone.”

Without waiting for a response, he headed blindly in the direction of the elevator.

* * *

“yeah, can i get a double order, burg and fries? to-go, and hold the ketchup.” Sans caught the bartender’s hesitation before he could vocalize it. “it ain’t for me. ‘dings isn’t feelin’ so hot. i don’t wanna risk him losin’ his appetite.”

Grillby flickered, his flames clicking and snapping.

Redbird yawned from a couple barstools over. Sans braced himself for a horrible mistranslation. “He says that’s a good decision, ‘cause anyone who sees how much ketchup you usually put on your food is gonna lose their appetite.”

Sans ignored the bird monster, shrugging to Grillby. “hey, you know it’s no skin off my back. heh.”

Grillby stared at him, and Sans rolled his eyelights. “‘dings won’t have kept track of how many times. you know how he is. always working himself down to— heh. well. i’m sure you’ve heard that one a dozen times, by now.”

Grillby’s shoulders twitched, and Sans couldn’t help but grin. Sure, the flame monster couldn’t do much in the way of making noise, but body language was body language. And Sans always knew when he was making other people laugh.

The bartender held up a gloved hand—  _ five minutes _ — and headed into the back to get Sans’ order started. Meanwhile, the stout skeleton slid onto his usual barstool and rested his head onto his arms, letting the familiar atmosphere of the bar and the doggi family’s idle chatter lull him into his usual nonchalant attitude.

All in all, it hadn’t been that bad of a day. Sure, he’d had to scrap most of the work on his recent project due to ‘interference’, and the room with the stabilizers for Alphys’ next assignment had yet to reappear. But he was fine with postponing yet another task for Alphys to keep track of— the poor monster already had so much on her hands, ever since he’d had to delegate an entire laboratory’s worth of work between the four of them.

…Three of them.  _ Three _ .

Sans buried his face deeper into his jacket sleeves. That was right, they’d lost another coworker today, just after clocking in. He’d forgotten. He was going to have to shift their schedules around again, probably work overtime to get everything for the day done.

The worst part was that Sans was absolutely sure that wasn’t the first time he’d thought that. Who knows how many times he’d already told himself to reassign their lab duties? He’d just forgotten, like he’d forgotten they’d lost… hell, he couldn’t remember their name at this point. No, never mind. That didn't matter.

It  _ especially  _ didn’t matter that Alphys hadn’t noticed at all. That she had never noticed any of her coworkers disappearing one after another. Or that Sans had lied to her, over and over, to keep her in the dark about it.

It didn’t matter that Sans had forgotten she spoke with a stutter.

...How had it come to this? Darting frantically around the facility, careful not to make the same mistakes as his coworkers— his friends. God, they had been his  _ friends _ . He’d known them, some of their families, had drinks with them, kept them company during long nights.

And he’d stood by and watched as they disappeared, one-by-one, picked off by various experiments and split-second mistakes. He hadn’t even tried to save them. Worse yet, he had  _ learned  _ from them. He knew not to go into the room with all the beds, he knew not to look down dark hallways, he knew to keep his eyes shut in the elevator to the basement. 

All the equipment and research he had at his disposal, in the lab, and he hadn’t done anything to save them, or to bring them back. No, he’d just used them as scapegoats, waiting for them to make mistakes so he wouldn’t have to suffer through them himself.

Sans was still here because they were gone. And he’d done  _ nothing. _

...Not like there was really anything  _ to  _ do at this point. There were only three of them left, after all. 

And Alphys was close to her limit, Sans knew. Whether she’d make a horrible mistake or storm out, he wasn’t sure, but he knew she couldn’t stand to be down there for much longer. And ‘Dings hadn’t come out of the basement in… hell, Sans could barely remember a time when their boss wasn’t down in the basement, desperately clinging to his research like it was his lifeline. The scientist would spend the rest of his life down there, if he could. 

And Sans… well, Sans would be by his side until that day came.

Three left. Counting down.

Sans had thought about going to Asgore, once or twice. Telling him everything that had happened, the failed experiments, the successful ones that came at too steep a price. But the king would want to investigate. He’d send more monsters into the labs, to their inevitable deaths and disappearances. Worst of all, he’d want to stop the research. Who knows what would happen to Gaster.

In the end, it’d be best if they were just forgotten, like the others. No survivors to tell the tale, or to continue the research and get more people involved.

The doctor was already too far gone, and Sans was in too deep with him. Alphys… Alphys had a shot. And Sans wouldn’t condemn her to the fate of his friends. If she left, he couldn’t—  _ wouldn’t—  _ stop her. But he wasn’t altogether sure he could convince her to leave, either. It would have to be her choice, in the end.

_ This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a few pathetic survivors waiting to be picked off like animals. _

_...That’s not nearly as catchy. _

“hey, grillbz,” Sans raised his head, and only just glimpsed the bartender appear in the threshold leading to the back. “think you could fix me something real quick, while i’m waitin’?”

A thin plume of smoke puffed past the elemental’s face, but he obliged anyway, heading towards the drinks.

“make it somethin’ strong, wouldja?” Sans settled his skull back onto his arms, sighing. “as it turns out, ‘dings ain’t the only one who’s had a long day.”

A moment later, there was the trickling of liquid and a glass was put near his skull. Sans barely lifted his head enough to drink without it pouring down his front, and downed the whole thing in a few seconds. Tangy and dry, his favorite. Count on Grillby to remember something so useless as Sans’ favorite drink and yet make it mean so much.

When he pushed the glass away and glanced up, Grillby was staring at him. Or, he thought he was. But then there was a crash at the front of the bar, and a very, very familiar tread of footsteps.

Well, shit.

Sans had hoped to avoid this. 

(But this was Murphy’s law. And even the reality-warping shit that went on in the lab had never stifled Murphy’s law. Besides, right now he was top-side. There was nothing to do about it:)

His brother had arrived.

“GRILLBY!” The lanky skeleton came barging through as usual, though with a quick glance at the patrons of the bar, respectfully lowered his voice. A bit. “Grillby, have you seen my— SANS!”

“bro. we’ve talked about this. everybody’s going  _ tibia  _ bit uncomfortable if you keep calling me  _ your  _ sans.”

“SANS, you absolute DUNDERHEAD!” Papyrus was at his side in a flash of white and orange, exasperated eyelights meeting his, as the younger brother checked over the older. “I was worried SICK! You didn’t leave a message, you didn’t pick up my calls, you—”

Sans blinked up at his brother, his words fading out of focus as the pure sight of him sank in. Papyrus looked  _ haggard _ . His cheekbones were pulled taut, his voice weaker than usual. And his eyelights had appeared— dim, but visible up close. He was worried. Sorely so.

Worried about Sans. For who knows how long. Too long.

…Sans had made his brother look like that.

Oblivious to his brother’s words, Sans suddenly reached forward, wrapping his arms around Papyrus’ neck and nestling his skull against his shoulder. Papyrus froze mid-sentence, then quietly gave in to the hug, squeezing his smaller brother with all his might. 

Sans took a deep breath and squirmed impossibly closer, taking in his brother like he could show him just how much he loved him with a simple— 

_ I could lose this. _

Sans’ soul made itself known in his ribcage with a sickening lurch. As unwanted as the thought was, it was right. Like so many others working in the lab, who had just disappeared and left their families behind. One wrong step in the lab, one wrong  _ thought _ , and he’d never have this again.

Sans breathed in to speak, to apologize, to say anything, but all at once it smelled like Papyrus and bones and home, and Sans just hugged him a bit tighter.

He missed his friends.

After a moment, Papyrus huffed over his shoulder. “You know, brother, you are usually very distant and snappy and wobbly when you are drunk. Like a dizzy porcupine! Or a very abrasive, tailless Temmie!”

Sans’ soul clenched, and he squeezed Papyrus even tighter. Sans couldn’t count the number of times Papyrus had had to drag him home, with Sans biting out every poisonous barb his mind would supply in his drunken fervor.

God, Sans really was an awful brother, sometimes.

“But, you are almost never this… clingy. And… your eyelights did not seem all that fuzzy…”

“i’m fine,” Sans said, and managed to make it sound like he didn’t want to slam his face against the bar counter for being a terrible, horrible brother. He pulled out of the hug, sitting back on his barstool and rubbing his skull. “i just… missed you today, is all. and nah, i’ve only had one drink tonight.”

Papyrus made a face like he was smelling something awful. Which, as Grillby turned the corner with Sans’ grease-filled order, could’ve been pretty likely. “But… if you’ve only had one drink, then why didn’t you come home on time tonight?”

Sans grimaced, shooting Grillby a grateful look for the food and rummaging in his pocket for his wallet. He dropped a few G on the counter and picked up the to-go bag, standing.

“had a long day at work, is all,” he replied, not quite meeting his brother’s eyes. He held up the bag and gestured to it. “an’ it’s not over yet. gotta get this to a friend, and then i’ll be right at home. promise.”

Papyrus didn’t look all that convinced, but that didn’t stop his conviction as he pronounced, “AH! That’s alright! In fact! I will come with you! And see that you are safe on your trek home tonight! And then we can have spaghetti for dinner! And you can FINALLY READ ME MY BEDTIME STORY!”

Sans couldn’t help but chuckle. His brother’s enthusiasm was almost childish in its innocence, and just as genuinely unpredictable. It never failed to startle Sans out of his brooding thoughts. Papyrus really was the coolest person he knew.

He meant so much to Sans.

…Which was why he couldn’t let him anywhere near the lab.

“you sure, bro? you really wanna walk all the way through  _ hotland  _ with me?”

Papyrus looked decidedly less enthusiastic. “I… yes! I will keep you company through Hotland’s unbearable Hotlanded-ness!”

“you can’t come into the lab, bro,” Sans grinned, unable to help himself. “you’d have to wait outside while i get this to ‘dings.”

Ah.

Sans winced.

That was a mistake.

“You’re delivering GRILLBY’S to your BOSS in the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?” Papyrus’ eyelights made a startling appearance, rolling in opposite directions as they were wont to do in his fits of passion. “Didn’t you say you had to do the EXACT same thing YESTERDAY? AND the night before? Nyeh! I’m not sure if I should be PROUD of you for the INITIATIVE or INFURIATED at your BOSS for EXPLOITING you in such a TRIVIAL manner!”

“uh, how about we stick with the first one for now, and you can chew the doc out tomorrow?” Sans shifted uncomfortably on his feet. Letting Grillby and perhaps an eavesdropping Redbird know that he was delivering dinner to his boss for the third night in a row was one thing. Letting the entire establishment know was another.

Sure, it was a bar, and secrets and gossip were spilled almost as much as the actual liquor was, but regardless of the bar-code, Snowdin was a small town. Word traveled fast. And small town residents were drawn to unprompted speculation like woshuas to scented soap.

“i’d better get going with this,” Sans spoke over whatever response Papyrus was about to give. “you really wanna come?”

“ABSOLUTELY!” Papyrus was instantly back to 100% enthusiasm, pumping a fist in the air. “But first, I will drop by Undyne’s house to drag her along with us, so we can both suffer TOGETHER in Hotland while you make your delivery!”

Sans laughed, waving goodbye to Grillby and a few other patrons of the bar as he and Papyrus made their way out. “heh.  _ scale  _ it back a bit, bro. i think that counts as cruel and unusual  _ pun-fish-ment _ .”

“SANS, oh my GOD! PLEASE RESTRAIN YOURSELF!”

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

“So what the hell’s up with you two?” Undyne grunted past clenched teeth as soon as Sans had disappeared past the laboratory doors. 

With a callous wave, the smaller skeleton had promised to return as soon as possible— a sentiment that both Undyne and Papyrus were planning to hold him to. But that meant they had to wait out in the blistering, sweltering heat of Hotland until he returned.

They were taking it well enough. At the moment, Undyne had her arms folded, and though she was sweating harder than Papyrus had seen anyone sweat, she kept the nonchalant expression persistently branded onto her face. To her left sat the water cooler from the front gates of Hotland, and in her hand was her ninth cup of water. She had carried the whole contraption, jug and cups and all, to the lab entrance, intending to pace herself through its contents, even if it was clear all she wanted to do was dump the entire thing over her head.

So far she’d only unintentionally crushed eight cups in her effort to stay cool. So the fact that she didn’t wait for Papyrus to respond to her question and instead went to refill her current cup was completely warranted.

Papyrus stared after her, his mind slow to comprehend her question. It was always harder to think in the itching heat, and he absently dabbed at a few sweat droplets forming at his forehead. “I am unsure what you mean by ‘up’ with us?”

“I mean you both look like absolute shit,” she huffed, shaking her fists for emphasis— and then grimacing at the accidentally-crushed plastic cup in her right hand. She tossed the remnant into the lava, took another cup, and filled it to the brim. “So? Who’ve I gotta pound for messing with the Underground’s two infamous skeleton brothers?”

Papyrus blinked, surprised even past the warmth blossoming in his soul at Undyne’s protectiveness. Of course, he knew he must have looked a bit haggard from worry— and Sans hadn’t looked very much like himself back at Grillby’s— but there was no single person to blame for all of that.

Well, maybe there was  _ one  _ person. 

“...Nyeh, it’s Sans’ boss!” Papyrus found himself huffing, his sudden agitation nearly sparking his eyelights. He gestured widely and scuffed his boots in the dirt, struggling to keep himself contained. It was still the middle of the night, after all, and there were a few monsters who resided in homes nearby. “I KNOW that Sans’ work is important to the Underground, and the Royal Scientist’s work even more so, but… but the man strings Sans along like some sort of— of— SUBORDINATE!”

“Uh.” Undyne paused with a cup half-way to her gills. “Sans  _ is _ the Royal Scientist’s subordinate, isn’t he?”

“Well, yes, but I am YOUR subordinate and you don’t see ME hand-delivering you a meal fit for two every night!”

Undyne, for all that she was a fish monster, choked mid-swallow on her water and doubled over, coughing. Papyrus’ frustration immediately hit the backburner, and he moved to give Undyne a few fierce slaps on the back. She straightened after a minute, though there was something very  _ different  _ about her expression. Her face certainly looked more red than normal, but there were traces of a smile at her lips.

“That’s… well, to be fair, you bring me spaghetti like, every day, Paps. Hell, we usually make dinner together for your cooking lessons each night.”

There was a questionable tone in Undyne’s voice that set Papyrus on edge. Like he was missing something. He strained to keep the impatient whine out of his tone. “But that is different! My personal training with you strengthens my skillset! I can learn something NEW, something VITAL from the preparation of foodstuffs! But Sans is not cooking this food, he is merely DELIVERING it! How is that supposed to help him?”

“Who knows, Paps,” Undyne shook her head, laughing under her breath. She placed a heavy hand on Papyrus’ shoulder and grinned. “I do know one thing, though. As cryptic and creepy as your brother can be, he’s got a reason for everything he does. Just because we don’t know what he’s getting out of it doesn’t mean he’s doing it for nothing.”

“I… I suppose you’re right,” Papyrus conceded the point, slumping under her hand. 

“‘Course I am!” She let her hand fall, grimaced at the line of slimy fish-sweat she left on his shoulder-pad, then stepped back to the water cooler to get yet another cup.

Papyrus mindlessly kicked her most recently-crumpled cup off the stony ledge and into the lava, where it sizzled and popped before evaporating. She really did have a point. And yet, they may never find out why Sans was so eager to help the Royal Scientist with something so  _ trivial  _ as dinner. Was he trying to get in his boss’ good graces? Or maybe there was more to the food than it seemed at first glance?

Speculation aside, it was difficult to get answers out of Sans on a good day. Undyne was right, his brother  _ could _ be very cryptic and cree—

“Wait a moment, creepy?  _ Sans? _ ” Papyrus blurted out before he could think to stop himself. He couldn’t help his surprise— to his knowledge, Undyne and Sans had never even interacted without Papyrus present. And he’d been  _ very  _ careful to preempt any sort of friendship shovel-talk from Sans. A side-effect of being raised by an overprotective older brother, presumably.

“I said he  _ can be _ creepy,” Undyne corrected, forgoing principle and dumping the cup of water over her head with a refreshing sigh. She moved to refill the cup yet again, keeping an eye on Papyrus’ developing expression. “I’ve seen him a couple times on my patrols in Waterfall.”

An embarrassed dread pooled in Papyrus’ marrow, and he wrung his hands uncomfortably. “Ah. I see. And has he said anything… untoward, to you?”

“HA! That little squirt, trying to threaten me? That’s a good one!”

Papyrus’ slightly-defensive ‘ _ he’s stronger than he looks,’ _ was cut off before it began as Undyne barrelled on, oblivious.

“Nah, he has no idea I’ve seen him. He’s always by himself, anyway, sitting at the docks or in that weird room with the bench. Most of the time he just… sits there, all perked up, like he’s trying to listen for something. But sometimes I catch him talking to himself. Saying weird stuff too, stuff that doesn’t make any sense.”

She trailed off, an unexpectedly thoughtful look on her face. She was so encased in her thoughts, she didn’t notice Papyrus shuffling slightly closer to the lab, nor the anxious looks he shot the building’s doors, as though he could pinpoint Sans’ exact location and draw him out in an instant.

Finally, Undyne shrugged out of her stupor and splashed herself with another cupful of the dwindling water reserves. “Eh, just seems like he’s working through some stuff, if you ask me. But, I mean, you know how echo flowers repeat everything like some sort of creepy playback— your brother’s just been hanging around, giving them too much creepy ammo, is all. Don’t go thinking I’m scared, punk! It just feels real sinister, patrolling down some of those corridors after Sans leaves, y’know?”

“No,” Papyrus said, his voice inexplicably subdued. Before he knew it, he was shaking his skull back and forth. “No, I don’t know. I have never heard of Sans acting like this. He  _ never  _ speaks about his problems out loud, even when he is alone. He’s too… er. Paranoid.”

Undyne watched him for a long moment. “Maybe he’s slipping,” she suggested.

_ In more ways than one, _ Papyrus finished in his own head. Out loud, he conceded, “In the past he has always talked to  _ me _ , but… these days he does not talk to me about much at all. Least of all about his work. I had attributed it to him wanting to hear more about my own adventures— being a sentry is far different from any other job I have had, and wonderful, absolutely wonderful— but… but…”

He jolted at the two hands that clapped down on his shoulders. Undyne was grinning widely at him, teeth and all. “Ngah, I wouldn’t worry about it, Papyrus. Your brother knows what he’s doing. He’s got you to care about him, after all.” 

She let her hands drop, but punched him in the arm for good measure. “But, uh, maybe you could tell him to quit being so weird while I’m patrolling? He nearly gave me a heart attack the last time I saw him. And catching me off-guard is quite the accomplishment! Fuhuhu!”

Papyrus laughed as well, a bit relieved when the conversation moved on to their upcoming training the next day. But the longer they spent talking and the longer Sans spent in the lab, the harder it became for Papyrus to not think about his brother’s recent behavior.

Sans had always seemed a little apathetic and nonchalant. But Papyrus knew that that was par for the course for his brother— as it would be for any monster growing up with such a horrendously low HP. It made sense. It was easier for other people to take the news when they matched it up with a casual, joking disposition.

But recently, things Papyrus would have taken for granted have seemed to have gotten worse. Small things, things he normally wouldn’t fret over. For instance, it was becoming harder and harder to get Sans up in the morning— a far cry from his older brother’s enthusiasm his first days into his job at the lab of the Royal Scientist— and the chores that Sans used to force himself to complete were now flat-out being left unattended to.

Worst of all, his brother’s smiles had changed. There was something different about them, about the way he tossed them around like they didn’t mean anything. Somewhere along the line, they had become stale and meaningless. Even his jokes were empty and overused. His own unoriginality didn’t even occur to him, or if it did, it still didn’t stop him from telling the same horrendous puns over and over again.

…There really was something  _ wrong  _ with his brother, wasn’t there? Something very,  _ very _ wrong. How had it taken him this long to notice it?

Papyrus was snapped out of his musings— and Undyne’s monologuing, which he had guiltily zoned out of— when the laboratory doors slid open, and Sans casually stepped out, patting down his clothes. He looked normal as ever, the only visible difference from twenty minutes ago being a subtle dissolved tension in his posture. He glanced up at Papyrus with one of those two-penny smiles, and Papyrus found himself wincing. Thankfully, Sans didn’t seem to notice.

“alright. all ready to go. thanks for waiting.”

“Finally,” Undyne scoffed, leaning down to pick up the water cooler and immediately taking off at a brisk pace toward Waterfall. “Now I can finally get some sleep.”

“And I may FINALLY receive my BEDTIME STORY! LET US GO!” Papyrus jabbed a finger to the way out of Hotland, following behind Undyne and briefly checking to make sure Sans was behind them. The stout skeleton followed behind, hands in his pockets and usual grin in place. He gave his younger brother a genial wink.

For some reason, Papyrus didn’t feel convinced.

* * *

_ When he came to, it was with the addled apathy of someone waking from sleep. A carelessness that was only just shy of suppressing his curiosity. He opened his eyesockets into the weightless space around him, and took in what he could. _

_ Wherever he was, it was dark. Darker than any place he had ever seen. Except maybe the basement of the lab. _

_ Maybe that’s where he was. _

_ He was lying on the ground. On  _ some _ thing, at least. Sans groggily curled his hand into a fist, feeling it clench around a sort of gooey substance. Yup, definitely something. Which was more than could be said about a lot of the rooms in the lab. _

_ Had he fallen in the lab somewhere? Tripped over his own feet and ended up face-first in some sort of goop room? It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Nothing was really beyond possibility at this point. _

_ Nothingness. That felt right. Maybe that’s where he was. It’s certainly what he felt. Nothingness. Like floating on the surface of water, emptiness stretching infinitely above and below, the skin of the waves the only thing able to affect him. Vaporous. _

_ Maybe this was him finally falling victim to the cycles. Like the others. Maybe he was trapped here, stuck in the in-between of the universe before he flickered into existence and then flickered away. Unseen by friends and family, only able to communicate with someone who had been exposed to the cycles before. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d get to see Alphys. Or the rest of his old friends. _

_ He should feel something about that. Excited? Sad, maybe. Or scared. _

_ But the stuff he was lying on was extraordinarily comfortable. It was pleasantly warm, and sticky, yes, but as long as he didn’t move, he couldn’t feel its texture. The longer he stayed there, the further he could feel it creep up his body. Or the further he sank down into it. Or maybe both. _

_ He turned his head to the side and watched as the substance slowly enveloped each bone of his left hand, seeping in-between the joints. Experimentally, he tugged his hand upward, and felt the substance pull it back down tenderly. Kindly. He could feel it touching his face, slowly pouring into his eyesocket. Though it was warm everywhere else, inside his skull it was cool to the touch, and gentle. _

_ Is this what the others felt, succumbing to their unreality? He hadn’t imagined his personal fate-worse-than-death to be so… calm. _

_ He should be moving. He should be finding out where he was. He should be panicking. _

_...But he was too comfortable to care. _

_ The stuff below him was seeping through his shirt, his shorts, his socks. It had completely encased his hands and feet and one full eyesocket, and was trickling through his nose and past his teeth. It tickled his ribs, wrapping gently around them like individual hands, caressing them and swathing them in cool intimacy. _

_ It was going to reach his soul soon. He should probably care about that. _

_ His forearms and his legs were almost completely under. Half of another eyesocket, and half of his mouth. Almost there. _

_ He felt the instant it touched the surface of his soul. Immediately, his bones went cold, and several instincts slammed past his thoughts, telling him to run or fight, flee or  _ do something _. _

_ So he smiled, soft and genuine. _

_ “hey, ‘dings,” he murmured, the words garbled by the darkness sloshing through his mouth. “if you wanted some company, you coulda just asked.” _

Sans’ eyes snapped open, waking him to the ceiling of his bedroom. For a long moment, he refused to breathe, waiting for the darkness of his dream and the darkness of his bedroom to separate, for his mind to settle into one reality. Once firmly grounded, he glanced down at himself.

The sheets and blankets of his bed were rolled into one homogenous ball of fabric and had been kicked to the foot of his mattress. Even his pillow had taken the leap and fallen the extraordinary six inches onto the floor. The darkness of his room felt intangible, and horribly cold.

He stared back at the ceiling and shivered.

Then he turned over and tried to go back to sleep.

The dream didn’t return.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait. Thank you for the feedback and kudos <3

* * *

Alphys couldn’t find who she was looking for.

She had no clue who she was looking for, but somehow that seemed like less of a priority than actually finding them. 

Which didn’t seem too odd when she considered her search had begun on a whim, when she had been passing through one of the many empty offices and saw a report faxed in from their oscilloscopes hooked up on the second floor. She’d stared at the stack of papers in the fax machine for a minute, losing herself in a haze of racing thoughts and a peculiar impulse to take it… _somewhere_.

The next thing she knew, the papers were stapled together between her claws and she was on an aimless goose chase through the whole facility. Some niggle in her brain kept insisting the papers were part of someone’s experiment and they needed it as soon as possible. Which, of course, the logical part of her brain told her was backwards and stupid and totally nonsensical.

But. It was often illogical to think logically down in these labs. Everything was nonsensical. The laws of physics liked to take intermittent (and usually inconvenient) bathroom breaks. Most types of machinery had to be fixed or rebuilt from scratch every two weeks. The ramen was always shrimp flavored, no matter what different kinds she bought and stashed in her office. That was just how things were.

And it was fine, really.

Fine.

Just yesterday she’d walked into her office to find _all_ of the various knick-knacks and anime dvds on her shelves replaced by thick packets of studies and research and books with _her_ name at the top, on subjects she’d never heard of. After a confused trek around the facility, she went back not five minutes later, and everything was back to normal— except that her favorite swivel chair she used to watch anime and relax was gone. Fourteen hours and three cycles later, she still had no idea where it went. Or if it was ever coming back.

Which was also. _Fine._

She pushed a scaled palm against her left eye and groaned. This place was getting to her. She was okay, she just had to hand the results of this experiment off to… to _someone_ , and then hope reality didn’t break hard enough to send her back to six hours before this moment, before she’d even retrieved the results from someone _else’s_ office in the first place.

It wouldn’t be the first time it happened.

“woah. someone looks frazzled.”

She came to a halt and stumbled backwards a bit, blinking to resurface from her thoughts and see who had spoken. 

It was only Sans, of course, smiling his usual genial smile and stuffing his hands in his lab coat pockets. That had been happening more, recently— the stout comedian popping in and out of existence mid-conversation, always acting as though nothing was wrong. Though, given all the stuff that happened regularly down here, maybe he didn’t even notice he was doing it.

She blinked down at his expectant gaze, then hastily tried to paste a smile on her face. “Oh, Sans, h-hey!”

He visibly winced at her using his name, and she mentally kicked herself. Right. They weren’t supposed to use names down here, not anymore— though she never actually found out what had prompted the rule. According to Sans, even _thinking_ names would be best avoided. But she was too scatterbrained to remember Sans as anything other than Sans. And she hadn’t broken any significant law of spacetime doing it. 

At least, she hoped she hadn’t.

...The fact that that was a possibility was exactly why she felt so scatterbrained recently. 

Honestly, this job had started out great. The pay easily covered the rent for her apartment just a few minutes walk away, the research was interesting enough, and she was given leeway to use the lab’s resources to tinker with in her free time. Yeah, maybe the royal scientist redefined the phrase ‘eccentric workaholic’ with each passing day, and perhaps the lab itself felt more and more like a haunted dungeon the deeper in you went, but it was tolerable. She had her own office, and when the hours were especially demanding, she had Sans to keep her company— the definition of an acquaintance-turned-coworker-turned-friend. Not to mention that on slower days she basically got paid to rummage around in the dump— a hobby she was perfectly content to live off of, even if the cooler bits of machinery had to be noted and filed away in the lab for later use.

That simplicity was in the past, now. Arbitrary time tables and longer hours plagued all of them, though the exhaustion was nothing compared to stumbling upon one reality-warping secret after another. Things to keep quiet, even from each other, to keep everything stable and everyone safe. Or, at least, to try. Odd interactions nobody else remembered, strange noises coming from nowhere, entire experiments disappearing without a trace.

If nothing else, the ‘safety procedures’ had made small talk between coworkers practically futile, something Alphys ached to lose— she had always relied on those small affirmations of reality to keep her grounded.

The funny thing was, she couldn’t pinpoint exactly _when_ everything had gone completely batshit— probably sometime between the ‘no food in the halls’ rule and their boss locking himself up in the basement like the perfect portrait of mental health— but the ambiguity of passing time was just another stupid constant of this stupid place.

All cards on the table, it weren’t for the amazing look on her resume, she would’ve called it quits at this creepy hell-hole ages ago.

“you, uh, you need something?”

“Oh! Y-Yes, sorry,” She felt the heat rush to her cheeks, flustered at having gotten so swept away in her thoughts. “Um, h-have you seen— er… what’s her name…” 

She trailed off, moments stretching longer and longer, her maw falling slack as she floundered. God, she’d been working here for months now. Why was she still blanking on names?

“whatcha got there?” Sans said instead, and she mechanically handed him the experiment results, grateful for the chance to save face. Sans’ face scrunched up, as much as the face of a skeleton with a barely-moldable skull could. 

At last, recognition flashed through his eyelights. Alphys nearly let loose a sigh of relief— of course Sans would recognize it. He’d really climbed the ranks since she took this job— nowadays, he had a hand in nearly every experiment going on in the lab, like a ringmaster conducting a balancing act. She was in constant wonderment, how he stretched himself so thin and had nothing to show for it but an extra weight on his already slumped shoulders.

“hm. you need to get this double-checked?”

“Er, y-yes, I-I think so,” she said, fiddling with her claws. That sounded reasonable enough.

Sans wasn’t fooled, but being the kind of monster he is, he didn’t mention it. Alphys didn’t mind that much— she could stare at the packet of papers for hours and still not have an inkling what it was for, and they both knew it. She was an engineer, the resident mechanic, not a scientist. Hell, she could hardly remember installing the feature for the oscilloscopes to fax measurements straight to someone’s office.

Sans chuckled a bit, his eyelights still scanning down the pages, and Alphys felt her self-conscious blush return with a vengeance. In retrospect, she probably should have just left the packet alone for someone else to find, instead of going on this pointless hunt for a colleague she apparently couldn’t even remember the name of.

But then she would’ve had to ignore that lurching feeling in her gut, that no one would have found them in that office.

Gut instinct, she was starting to gather, was more important than anything else down here.

On an impulse driven by that very instinct, she reached forward to take the packet of papers back, intent on at least sparing Sans of delivering the packet himself. But before she could grab it, Sans folded the whole thing up and stashed it away in his lab coat.

“no worries. i’ll make sure she gets them,” he said with a wink, and Alphys awkwardly retracted her hand.

She half-way considered just asking _who_ would end up getting them, if only to get the monster’s name and not look like a total dumbass next time, but he looked so confident in his grin— so she let him have it. He probably knows exactly where to take the damn thing anyway, and wouldn’t get lost wandering around here like she usually did.

Instead, she tried to smile gratefully back, knowing it looked forced.

(Sans had climbed the ranks _very_ quickly, hadn’t he?)

God, there was something wrong here.

(When was the last time she saw anybody except Sans down here?)

There was something very, very wrong here.

Sans heaved a sigh, some unidentifiable element wilting from his perma-grin. “you look like hell. Have you eaten anything today?”

“I—” she grappled for a moment with the whiplash from her thoughts, then stopped.

When _was_ the last time she ate? Hell, for that matter, when was the last time she slept? These days it felt like she was back in college again, inhaling ramen nearly constantly and letting the exhaustion gnawing at her insides become standard practice. 

It wasn’t just her own negligence, she reminded herself, ignoring how petulant she sounded in her head; it _was_ hard to keep track of time down here, what with the distinct lack of clocks or any other kind of time-keeping device. They’d taken all those down at some point, along with the doors.

Actually… she couldn’t remember how they were supposed to tell time anymore. Surely they did? Surely there was some way for them to accurately clock in and clock out?

Come to think of it, when was the last time she even went outside? The dingy walls of this place had made her feel claustrophobic more times than she could count, but at times like this it felt like they were deliberately folding in, ensnaring the pair of them in the grasp of something bigger than could be perceived. Keeping them tethered here.

She jolted, realizing that wasn’t quite ‘normal’. They must be at the peak of a cycle.

She repressed a shudder, suddenly very aware of how badly she needed to blink. She resisted, just in case.

“come on. let’s get out of here and grab some grub, ok? you look like you need the break.”

She shook her head, even though she completely agreed. For some reason, there was something about the thought of leaving at the moment that made her scales crawl. The wall to her left was shifting in some way, she was sure of it, but she didn’t know how. She kept a strict eye on it. “I… I’m not s-sure…”

“trust me,” Sans said. A quaver in his tone wrenched her gaze from the wall back to him.

It was like some strange impulse had come over him— all at once she could see the strain in his smile, the sweat on his brow, the panic in his eyelights. The barely concealed tremor in his hands as he extended one towards her. She frowned, taken aback.

He spoke again, voice a bit desperate. “let’s get out of here. okay?”

“O-Okay.” She followed Sans through the twists and turns of the facility, trying not to think about changing hallways and drifting walls as they made their way up, and up, and up, to the rest of the Underground. Where things made sense. Where reality was stable and predictable and no laws of physics were broken because you switched on the fan in the break room.

At some point, Sans’ hand had become clasped in hers. She gave it a tight squeeze. Without so much as blinking, he squeezed back firmly.

God, this job was a shitshow.

* * *

“you want— _what?_ ” Sans nearly choked on his spaghetti, fork clinking to rest at the lip of the bowl as he coughed into a fist.

From across their living room, pausing mid-laundry folding, Papyrus was staring him down resolutely, looking frighteningly determined. “I want to speak with your boss!”

“uh,” Sans cleared his throat a final time, glancing sideways. “heh. i’m not sure, pap. he’s... boring. a drag. dry as bones. you wouldn’t like him.”

“That is PRECISELY why I would like to speak to him!” Papyrus boomed, neatly placing one of his basketball jerseys in an absurdly tall pile that would inevitably end up in his room. He patted it down for good measure, then turned to Sans with his hands on his hips. “He is your boss! And as your brother, I feel obligated to practice overlooking such qualities and build a RAPPORT with him!”

“uh. you really don’t have to do that, bro.”

“Hmf. I APPRECIATE your consideration, Sans, but I feel I really MUST!”

Not good. Sans knew that tone, that posture. The subtle tension in his jaw. Papyrus wasn’t planning on budging on this, not in the slightest. He was prepared to argue for it, to wear Sans down until he got what he wanted.

Sans frowned, resettling himself on the couch cushion to more comfortably take in his brother’s demeanor. “no offense, pap, but. ‘dings ain’t really the type of guy to make friends with.”

“Ah! You underestimate me, brother! The Great Papyrus is capable of befriending even the most unfriendly of monsters!”

“that’s... not what i meant,” Sans chuckled. “you’re the coolest guy in the underground, everyone knows that. but ‘dings… he’s not made for that sorta thing, y’know?”

“For FRIENDSHIP?” Papyrus exclaimed, clearly rattled by the notion of someone so self-contained. Sans shrugged, grin bright and shit-eating. “NONSENSE! Every monster likes friendship!” 

With no response from Sans, Papyrus huffed, folding his arms across his ribcage. “Well, at the very least, he’s friends with YOU, isn’t he?”

Sans felt his reply build just behind his teeth. Then he stopped. And felt himself go very, very still. Of course, Papyrus was always more attentive than Sans ever gave him credit for.

But damn, if times like this didn’t make Sans feel like a beached fish, naked and exposed to his brother’s keen eye.

He turned his head away and down, desperately trying to hide how close his eyelights felt to extinguishing, how stiff his permagrin had become to keep from slipping. “yeah,” he said, voice quiet, thick with memories.

Unbidden, the times of him and ‘Dings working consecutive nights on his dissertation flashed into his mind. Their shared late afternoon lunch breaks at the nearest grease joint. Flinging jokes back and forth over experiments-in-progress. Gentle hands resting on shoulders, flighty fingers adjusting each other’s collars, lingering gazes when the other is turned, sitting through terribly boring staff meetings and shared pained glances.

Hearing ‘Dings’ real voice. Prompting his laughter— not the restrained, quiet chuckle, but the surprised guffaw that sounded like a Temmie getting stepped on and made Sans’ soul soar in his ribcage. That damned smile, rare but full, always aimed at Sans when he thought he couldn’t see.

Their work had been one of the only things tying them together, tethering a relationship that gradually became more and more strained. Whatever they did, whenever they talked, it was always work-related, always had some kind of subordinate-mentor subtext.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t _real_ , what they have. Used to have.

“...y’know. we used to be, anyway.”

There was a moment of deafening silence, neither brother willing to overstep and break it. 

Then Papyrus moved, depressing the edge of the couch cushion with his weight and watching his gloved hands fiddle in his lap. When he finally spoke, his voice was abnormally gentle, subdued. 

“I… I remember when you used to speak of inviting him over for dinner. You always said you’d get him to come one day. You’d tell me night after night to prepare my best spaghetti because tonight would be the night, for sure. You even cleaned your room a few times— well, you picked the laundry up off the floor, at least. Then one day… you just stopped bringing it up. And I thought…”

However he wanted to finish that thought, Sans wouldn’t know. Papyrus adjusted himself on the couch, turning to give Sans his full attention. To let him see the innocent sincerity of his concern, pooling in his hollow eyesockets. He put a hand on Sans’ knee and squeezed.

“…Perhaps you shouldn’t be bringing him dinner every night.”

The back of his eyesockets flared with heat, and Sans let a choked noise escape his throat, half-laughter, half-something else. Dramatic. He was just being stupid, and dramatic. 

He tried to shake his head and say that wasn’t it at all. That he wasn’t chasing some fabricated relationship he’d merely cultivated in his head. That he wasn’t doing what he was never bold enough to ask for, because some part of him knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

That he hadn’t already missed his chance for something more.

Instead, what came out sounded horribly close to a sob. “i don’t bring him dinner _every_ night.”

Of all the things to refute, that was perhaps the stupidest, but Papyrus— his amazing, kind, considerate, _loving_ brother— didn’t mention it. Instead he reached for Sans’ shoulders and pulled him in close and said softly, “I know you don’t.”

And there was that feeling all around him, the smell of marrow and citrus detergent and _Papyrus_ , and Sans buried his face in his brother’s scarf and tried to cement the moment in his soul.

He wanted to. He wanted to bring ‘Dings dinner every night for the rest of his life, wanted to take him out of that horrid basement and never let him back in. He wanted to take him home for dinner, he wanted to spend the holidays with him, he wanted him to meet Papyrus. He wanted to talk to him, to make him laugh, to make him to _care_ , at least a little, before… 

Three of them were left. Counting down.

How much time did they have left?

“he’s not worth it,” Sans mumbled into Papyrus’ battle body, pulling back just enough for his words to be heard. And it was so, so easy to say the words like they meant everything, when they were as hollow as the empty space in his chest. “he’s not worth you talkin’ to him. i’m, heh. i’m just hanging onto something i’m used to, is all.”

He just had to… get over it. Get over everything. He had no choice. Three of them left, and Gaster was backsliding into unreachable territory, deeper and deeper every day. He had to let go of ‘Dings, no matter how much he didn’t want to.

_Had to let go of Papyrus, too._

Sans balled up his fists in his brother’s scarf, a flash of dread coming over him.

_Just… not yet._

“Well. I suppose I do not _have_ to speak with him, if you think it will do no good,” Papyrus trailed off, visibly torn. He spoke again before Sans could, one last reach: “Perhaps I could just talk with him for a minute, explain a few… pertinent things?”

Sans let out a shuddering breath. ‘Dings was Sans’ mess to deal with, but Papyrus was his brother. And much as he loathed the thought of them meeting, Sans was even more unwilling to burst Papyrus’ bubble. “maybe sometime later, alright? things are real hectic in the lab at the moment.”

“Of course! No way could the Great Papyrus not accommodate for other people’s livelihoods!”

“heh. you’re the best, pap. and, uh. sorry. bout the waterworks.”

“We all need to cry sometimes, Sans. Even the Great Papyrus cries, sometimes!” Papyrus intoned, rubbing circles into his back. “Just as I have you during those times, you have me now!”

Sans snorted, wavering in place as Papyrus held him at a distance, to look him in the face. “ugh. s’rry for makin’ your scarf all gross. ‘ _snot_ my intention.”

Papyrus froze a little, taking a moment of digest the wordplay. When he did, Sans didn’t miss the faint relief that softened the edges of his eyesockets. “Argh, brother! You are _so—_ ”

“careful, bro. if _mu-cus_ me out, I might not recover.”

“... _excused_ ,” Papyrus finished through gritted teeth, but his cheekbones were pert, belying his unmatchable grin. “Just this once! Do not think I will allot you special treatment like this all the time!”

“‘course not. i know special treatment from you isn’t somethin’ to _sneeze_ at.”

Papyrus made a discomfited sound, rising from the couch and handing the bowl of half-finished spaghetti back to Sans. “You are on thick ice, brother!”

“uh. heh.” Sans took the bowl, toasting to Papyrus with a forkful of stale noodles. “i think it’s ‘thin ice’, dude.”

“That’s preposterous! Why would anybody knowingly stand on thin ice?”

“ _I-ce-_ ume just to annoy their brother.”

He barely dodged the laundered shirt tossed at his head.

* * *


End file.
